Sometimes its scary when the future of technology stares you right in the face, quite literally with the Looxcie. It’s a full on mobile surveilance system that brings us into a horrific privacy debate regarding “always on recording.” Regulations need to be put in place with this type of technology, perhaps to only be used as an enhancement for law enforcement agencies. It is such a small and insignificant looking device that anyone could be recording at anytime, anywhere, without anyone knowing it.

These days the majority of Bluetooth devices are used to transmit audio via cell phone headsets, the Looxcie is a Bluetooth camcorder that will continuously record a live realtime audio/video feed to your Android smartphone. A 5 hour buffer allows you to snag 30 second clips just incase something spectacular had occurred and you wanted to save it.

Of course, before your social distribution takes place, you may want to edit out any “revealing” scenes that may have accidentally been captured, so the Looxcie app offers a bit of functionality in respects to editing your videos and uploading to various destinations.

I personally don’t care about surveillance, its just another big brother intimidation routine. If it ends up catching someone in the wrong, it was worth it all along.

According to Looxcie’s customer service, their product is ready to ship except Amazon has had issues in listing it; that should be cleared up any day now. It retails for $199 USD, features an obscure HVGA (640 x 240) resolution, 4GB of onboard memory, and a 365mAh fast-charge battery that gives you 4+ hours of video recording time.

7 comments

I think the sweet spot would be 12 – 14 hrs of record time.The res is fine for a 1st gen device. Hopefully These will become standard equipment for cops this way when they mess up its on “tape.” Do it yourselfers and hobbiest will get a great deal of benefit from it also mechanics an service pros will too.

Yeah up the res, increase battery life and min record for 10-12 hours.
I drive trucks, if i could record the idiots i look down upon, we might get safer roads with less idiots on them due to being removed for infringements…that said the law would need to keep pace with tech it it’s already 30-100 years behind in most instances.

Mmm, looks nice.
But at only 640×240 the res is too low, really.
Shame, looks otherwise neat.
Don’t know why it specifically states “Android smartphones”. Is it presumed that they are the only mobile device that supports bluetooth video streaming? Or maybe it comes with/requires specialist software that is only available for android?
conclusion: nice device. Up the res.

I take it the first 2 responses are from americans. You poor guys. All we seem to hear from you lot is “invasion of privacy” & “terrorism”

this could actually be a pretty useful professional tool. For example, this coupled with a video call could allow an IT tech to contact a colleague and show them a particular problem they cant fix. Using one of these, demonstrational videos could also be easier to make. Also, using one of these you wont have to worry about the camera being at a funny angle because it will be in line with the recorder’s eyesight.

My rights allow for me to not have to worry about 3rd party peeping toms to be recording every THING in their path. This camera is a massive peeping tom weird o tool and if someone wanted to record their friends just use a regular camera but this thing is SCARY and could be a huge privacy concern in the wrong hands. If there were not so many weird os out there we wouldnt have to worry. Nothing to do with terrorism not sure why you people bring that crap up allt he time.

Please stop with the uninformed and reactionary commentary that helps push further restrictions of our rights. Most states already have laws about video and other types of recording that are sufficient for privacy protection, and many of them are far too limiting and punitive, especially with regard to recording of public places that “might be terrorist targets” and recording of law enforcement personnel which is usually the only way to prove that they are doing wrong.